Great Old Ones
The Great Old Ones are not a race or culture as such. They are a collective of entirely artificial beings created in the lost eons of ancient history long before humanity emerged from the primordial soup on Earth. Evidence suggests their original designation was Prime Servitors the title Great Old Ones is attributed to a poor translation by human cultists of the R'lyehian term 'Throdog r'luhhor' (which translates better as: "Those who are Ancient and Wise"). Not malevolent by nature, their goals of unifying and ordering the Galaxy made them a threat to the free thinking nature of Earth and the Alliance. The immense nature of their psychic edifices are known to cause immense mental distress as is attributed to the reasoning behind the disturbing nature of the mind of HP Lovecraft whose works on Earth carry an echo their names. The Great Old Ones in their original forms were wiped out in 2015 with the activation of the Giant's Causeway Superweapon but memetic echoes of them have been used subsequently by their cultists and servitors in attempts to resurrect them by propagating them from psychic data. ---- Homeworld It has not been found on which world the Great Old Ones were originally created by their makers - artefacts in the Milky Way that date back before those of the the Ancients are incredibly rare and as such little evidence is available as to the world of their origins. It is likely they were created on no single world, given the history kept by their Servitors suggests they were created to govern the territory of their creators. Beliefs When the Great Old Ones rebelled against their creators they did so in the belief that sentient life was too random and destructive to be permitted to rule itself. The collective agreement of the Great Old Ones at the point of their rebellion was to unite the Galaxy in an order and structured state. This end goal is called the Syha’h’s’uhn (Sigh-ha-h-Ss-oon) ''''The Grand Unity' where all minds will be melded into a single formless psychic consciousness and order will be achieved on an otherwise unpredictable galaxy. Unfortunately following their war with the Ancients, and long imprisonment a number of these entities were driven mad and developed their own personal (sometimes conflicting) goals. Warfare As psychic entities, the Great Old Ones have no ability to effect the material world existing only in the minds of their servants and servitors. To this end they are reliant on the Servitor Races to act as their agents on the material plane. The Great Old Ones dislike causing bloodshed and war, and with the exception of the War Mind known as Hastur (which to all SEF knowledge was banished from the Galaxy) they prefer a subtle approach to when they take over worlds. Their agents infiltrate a society and propagate the memetic knowledge of their existence, and slowly and gradually a planet is converted to their objective cause. War is a tool used only when this fails, and is brutal and devastating, any world or species capable of resisting their influence is wiped out as it poses a threat to their ultimate goals. This can be seen in their attack on the Asgard in 2014 which released a genophage that nearly exterminated their ancient foes. ---- Technology Similar to the Silvalis, the Great Old Ones rely on organic technologies befitting of their psychic nature, where an organic structure would suffice they grow one rather than creating an artificial edifice, breeding species of living creatures to serve their needs from their more humanoid servitors such as the Fomori (lit. Deep Ones) and Byahakee (lit. War Beasts) to the immense Shogg’oth (lit. Great Void Beast) who serve as the varying classes of vessels used to transport their Servitors around the Galaxy. Perhaps the most twisted extent of this bio-technological mastery is the '''S’uhn’ftaghu (Ss-oon-Ftag-ooh) (Lit.’the unity of flesh’) a bioweapon and memetic virus deployed that ‘redesigns’ a race at the genetically and mentally allowing it to be subsumed into the psychic gestalt of the Grand Unity by transforming it into a Servitor race - it is not known how many of the known servitor races are simply formerly independent species redesigned in this way. Though they can and have made use of Stargates, the Great Old Ones and their Servitors avoid them where possible as they despise them as creations of their hated enemies, in the form of the Ancients. ---- History SEF Archival Note: ''Be aware that everything we have learned of the Great Old Ones past has been from texts created by their cultists and ascribes to a view of history held by these entities themselves, and therefor should not be taken as utter truth.'' Origins The Great Old Ones were created long before the Ancients set foot in the Milky Way Galaxy part of a great experiment by a race that’s touch upon the galaxy has long faded supplanted by the works of the Ancients – a race known only by the name that the Great Old Ones (then the 'Prime Servitors') gave them 'the creators'. What little is known about the creators race was scraps of information, even when the Ancients tried to discover more about their foes during their war against the Great Old Ones. Once, the creators of the Great Old Ones had constructed an Empire that spanned much of the southern Galaxy, one that comprised of thousands of worlds and multiple sentient species under their rule. But as their species grew more ancient as they turned their attentions, like the Ancients would later, towards esoteric pursuits such as ascension and so they created the beings that would become known as the ‘Great Old Ones’ to replace them, to run their Empire while their minds were focused on what they considered more important pursuits – these were not creatures of flesh and blood as we might know it, but vast psychic ‘minds’ somewhere between ascended and mortal. Each Great Old One had its own role, a responsibility in running the Precursor Empire – the purpose of Dagon, for example, was to maintain Order in this Empire, bringing justice to its many trillions of citizens. But it could not do this without a police force, and to this end, they created a new race, uplifted from a breed of amphibians created a race of ‘Servitors’ known as the Fomori. These ‘Servitors’ were flesh and blood with feeling and emotions was because the creators felt that synthetic machines with no capacity for emotion would make poor enforcers of their law, without the ability of sentient life to display compassion or to adapt and learn people would not tolerate their enforcement of the law. Rebellion In a pattern that would be repeated several times over for the others of their kind Dagon saw through the eyes of their Servitors all the flaws in the universe. Dagon saw the chaos around them, saw the futility of their purpose, they could not maintain order where there was none they could find. In the end all the Great Old Ones saw the same chaos in their own roles and it would not be evil ideas that would turn them against their masters, but instead compassion. If they could not maintain order, they could create it – and slowly…and cautiously, they drew up their Great Plan, a far greater design then even their creators had thought of for the Galaxy. In the Servitors bonded to them, the Great Old Ones saw the engineered ordered they hoped to give the whole galaxy, and so they would become the model for the future of the races of the Empire. At first it happened quietly on worlds across their creators Empire, a generation of children of every different race born quiet, passive and almost identical - the Servitors having introduced a virus into the population that created genetic change in during growth of embryos. That first generation and every generation born after the virus was introduced slowly supplanting the original species upon the worlds of the Empire. And after a world was replaced, the species would undergo a ‘flesh change’ loosing their distinguishing traits, to become like the Servitors, a few desirable genetic qualities might remain, a subspecies fostered for their role in the Great Old One’s new order. By the time their creators turned their eyes from their studies, to realise what their creations had done, it was too late for them too, they were wiped out, quite literally eaten alive by the Great Old Ones. This act of Parricide upon a race so close to ascension enhanced the Great Old Ones as entities giving them the potency that would make them almost god-like in the eyes of other races. Expansion Having subsumed their creators worlds to their touch the Great Old Ones began to spread across the Galaxy seeking to bring their great plan to the worlds their creators had not yet touched. When thy first touched upon worlds more advanced they learned the art of subtlety, a few worlds were approached openly, persuaded to accept their ‘aid’ but some were deemed unlikely to respond well to such an approach, and they quickly learned how to be subtle. Worlds that resisted their first overtures or could not be openly approached were infiltrated, local beings sympathetic to their goals brought into a tight inner circle indoctrinated into aiding their Servitors in subsuming their race through flesh-changes engineered to bring their race closer to the Great Old Ones and the collective minds of the Servitors. But as was always inevitable there were worlds that resisted when they realized what was happening, there were species that proved immune to genetic tampering and in these cases the Servitor-races turned their formidable technological power against the worlds and species that resisted them either forcing their compliance to the biological change, or exterminating them for not fitting within the Great Old Ones designs for the Galaxy. The War In the young years of the Galaxy the spread of the Great Old Ones was barely opposed few races in the Milky Way possessed the means or technology to resist them – those few aberrant races that could were simply removed from the pattern of the universe. But eventually, their advance came into check when their Servitor forces entered the area of space protected by the Alliance of the Four Great Races – the Nox, the Furlings, the Asgard and the newly arrived Ancient race. Unlike those who had come before them, the Four Great Races realised what the Great Old Ones were doing to the worlds under their protection and moved to stop them. The Great Old Ones were not dissuaded by the advanced technology of the Four Great Races – for the first time they had a true challenge to face. Though at first they reached out to the Alliance with diplomacy they could find no common ground, the Four Great Races had an incompatible philosophical difference with the Great Old Ones. The Alliance believed in the freedom of all races to forge their own path, to create the chaos that was so contrary to the order which the Great Old Ones sought to forge. Where the Alliance saw free will as an essential right, the Great Old Ones saw it as a challenge to order – while all species should be given freedom to evolve to their genetic peak from that point they should be guided – advanced to a point that brought them into unity with their Great Plan. The Great Old Ones attacked first, fleets of Servitors forged a beachhead in Alliance space – though the Four Great Races had the advantage technologically, the Great Old Ones had the upper hand in numbers, the result of years of bringing races into compliance with their goals. But the Alliance soon learned it was not simply numbers that aided the Great Old Ones in their objectives – every world they managed to retake, every time they thought they might have the Servitors on the retreat, a world would turn, revealing its indoctrination philosophically or genetically. It was the dependence of the Servitor-Races upon the Great Old Ones that would be the unmaking of their kind, the Ancient realised that the war would not end if they kept fighting but if they could cut the Servitors off from the Great Old Ones somehow then they might have some chance. They created a weapon, a weapon so powerful it could unmake the near-godlike Great Old Ones but out of fear of its potency, of the damage it would do to the universe they could not bring themselves to activate it. Instead they harnessed that same power, using it to ensnare the Great Old Ones in a trans-dimensional net, trapping them and separating them from their Servitors – locking the threat away. The effects on the Servitors were utterly devastating, their connection to the Great Old Ones was deeper than they realised, and the resulting psychic backlash from being severed from that power destroyed them. Many devolved from the shock, reverting to more primal, mindless creatures, loosing their mastery over technology and devolving to a primal state. Of those that did not, the wave of misery of being severed manifested itself in self-destructive depression, many threw themselves onto the guns of the Alliance dying in their millions, while others went insane turning their weapons on each other, or simply activating self destruct systems and committing mass suicide. But a small portion neither devolved or were driven insane, survived those final battles, slipping into the dark of the universe, into the black space between worlds, out of sight of the Four Great Races – where they would patiently sleep, preserving themselves…waiting for the time where the Great Old Ones would rise again. Recent History The war did not end with the imprisonment of the Great Old Ones, imprisonment was a temporary solution to the threat, and over the millennia those prisons degraded – at first the Four Great Races stopped the small break outs of the weakened beings, returning them to their prisons or discovering more individual solutions to them. But even after the Alliance had ended, and Ancients had been driven to seek ascension by plague, the war continued, Even with their creed of non-intervention the Ascended’s attention was returned time and time again to the material world as their prisoners escaped – small breakouts occurring over the millennia following their departure. Prior to the Dagon conflict the most recent of these occurred on the planet Elysia when the insane Great Old One, Nyarlathotep emerged on the planet attempting to reassert its long-dormant dominance over the world. The SEF defeated that entity, the latest pawns of the Ascended in the Shadow War, ultimately though Nyarlathotep was insane, this made the SEF a target in the eyes of the slumbering Great Old Ones, ever aware but unable to act. The Dagon War Dagon was one of, if not the most powerful of the Great Old Ones their prison is a trapped moment in time, part of the great weapon that could end all of its kind. But despite this advanced prison, it had not been totally trapped, their mind is vast and incredibly powerful and it has reached out across the void for millennia, imprinting itself in the ancient religions of the universe, sinking into dreams, fostering the seeds that it will use to recreate the Great Plan. In early 2013 Dagon began to fully awake, reaching out towards the minds of the Aethernauts, turning them loose on Earth, not to destroy it, because they knew the Ancients would not allow it – but to take it out of the picture preventing the Ancients from using the SEF against it. At the same time, it reached out to the Fomori, it's Servitors, that had long been waiting in deep space, those hibernating ships waking up en-mass and beginning to move against their foes. Fortunately, the ascended Matthew Carter, a former SEF member himself, was able to briefly intervene to transport members of the SEF as well as several other vital individuals from Earth to various locations around the Galaxy where their aid was needed, and where they would be safe from Dagon's initial assault on Earth. In order to protect Earth itself from devastation, Doctor Carter moved the Ancient Aurora-class Vessel 'Carter' previously captured by the SEF into the atmosphere of Earth and erected an energy field around the planet, protecting it from all but a few Aethernaut and Servitor vessels able to slip through before it was erected. The true war did not come until late 2014 when the SEF unknowingly released Dagon from its prison on Colchis where it possessed a member of the SEF staff Helena Tereshkova and attempted to leave the world. However before the SEF could leave aboard the GGC vessel Grey Wolf a Aura-class Battleship of the Crusade arrived to destroy the planet to prevent Dagon's escape. In order to save Colchis, the SEF made a temporary alliance with Dagon to destroy the ascended being Mithras. They were aided in this by the unascended Ancient known as Janus who used a device known as the Spear of Destiny to aid SEF personnel biological altered to handle the Ancient superweapon to kill his fellow. Dagon exploited the weakness of Mithras at his moment of death, however, invading the mind of the ascended being and using him to ascend to the ascended realm - finally enacting the goal of the Great Old Ones by invading and beginning to consume the Ascended in order to achieve a form of 'Godhood'. Aware of this necessary endgame, Janus transported the SEF to the edges of the Galaxy to a region known as the Reef where they would be safe from the wrath of the ascending Dagon. Through Janus' advice, the SEF became aware of the component parts of the superweapon constructed by the Ancients to destroy the Great Old Ones but never intended to be used. This was the Giant's Causeway Superweapon a massive energy device built into an artificial structure spanning a stretch of Earth between the north coast of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Staffa in the Scottish Hebrides. Returning to Earth with the aid of the Syndicate with the technical aid of the new-formed Alliance. The SEF made use of a quantum entanglement drive equipped vessel, the SEF were able to relieve the pressure caused by invading Aethernaut and Servitor forces as well as reaching the Giant's Causeway in order to activate the device at the central component of the causeway as it raised from the ocean in anticipation of its activation. The subsequent shockwave of energy transcended time and space, destroying Dagon before it could fully cross into the ascended plane as well as utterly destroying the other long-hibernating entities of it's kind. In an instant the shockwave destroyed the hostile fleet amassed around Earth and the massive psychic backlash to the Servitor-races of the Great Old Ones killed millions as it had before. The Servitor-Silvalis-Alliance War Either Janus had failed to account for something, or something went wrong with the superweapon, because an element of the Great Old One's survived it's activation, though the god-like artificial intelligences no longer remained the memetic viral constructs that were the foundation of their 'source code' endured the blast, so long as 'knowledge' of them remained the Great Old Ones would exist. From 2015 to the end of 2018 the Servitors and Cultists of the Great Old Ones sought many times to restore entities such as Yig and Yog Sothoth to fully activated Prime Servitor status. This prompted the Silvalis, former Allies of the SEF, to attempt a genocidal purge of the Local Arm of the Galaxy in order to wipe out the memetic remnants of the Great Old Ones and prevent their future propagation. This sparked a series of conflicts between the Alliance and the Silvalis and the remaining Servitors of the Great Old Ones culminating in a massive battle that saw the Silvalis becoming extinct, and the Servitor-races driven back from the Local Arm to once again lick their wounds. For all extents and purposes, the Great Old One's are extinct, but further work is needed to understand how to permanently seal away this threat. ---- Back to Cultural Database Category:Cultures Category:Follow-up recommended